Trifling
by kiomaru1
Summary: What if everything was just too easy ? What if the concept of "hard work" suddenly became akin to fantasy ? Jaune is about to find out...


_**What if everything was just too easy?**_

 _ **What if the concept of "hard work" suddenly became akin to fantasy?**_

 _ **Jaune is about to find out**_...

Despite what some of his friends might have to say about him , the young man known Jaune arc was no idiot, for he knew exactly what he signed up for upon forging the fake transcripts that would grant him access to the Famous Beacon academy for huntsmen and huntresses . He understood very well that he had hardly any fighting skill, little to zero knowledge about weapons and dust, and definitely possessed no innate talent whatsoever that would help him at achieving his childhood dream of being a hero.

He certainly realized that faking his entry at the famed academy would be practically suicide. Not only for the high risk of getting caught, but also for the fact that his would be peers, having years of training experience under their belt, would be leagues apart from him in terms of skills, trampling over his already low-self-esteem and also making his livelihood a tremendous hazard for his already fragile-health.

Coupled with the fact that he would have to fight Grimm's, bloodthirsty monsters who took pleasure in hunting weak and defenseless humans like himself, trying to become a huntsman at his current state would indeed be practically suicide.

But Jaune was no idiot. He realized the many improbabilities of ever achieving his dream. He knew that his chances of succeeding were depressingly close to zero. He understood all of that, yet he still tried.

Why? Because Jaune was not an idiot. No. he was far worse than that.

Jaune was an optimistic fool.

How could he not? After all, despite all odds against him, the impossible had happened: He actually got accepted in Beacon!

His forged transcript, as unlikely as it was, seemed to have been good enough to fool the headmaster of Beacon himself, and the numerous staff in charge of double checking the authenticity of each student registration. If this wasn't a sign that fate was on his side, then what could be?

Only an idiot wouldn't push forward. And Jaune was no idiot.

So he went to beacon, hoping that things would work out. Heck, He even made a friend on his first day despite his abysmal social skills, further feeding into his delusional hopes that fate was on his side. . . . . .

Unfortunately, the only fate he would meet was the one that would strike him face ahead with its full concrete reality. A fate that took the fitting form of an "initiation".

Yes, there was an initiation that all the newly enrolled freshmen had to take to officially get the title of "huntsman/huntress" in training. While the way this was announced had seemed pretty ominous, the ever optimistic Jaune didn't fret over what he thought were "minor details" to the grand-scheme of his future as a hero. So he kept on carelessly, not minding at all of what would happen at that initiation day tomorrow. . . . .

Too bad he didn't have a landing strategy.

/

Jaune slowly awoke in an empty void of ethereal darkness. Seemingly relaxed and composed at first, as one would be after rising from a revitalizing night of undisturbed sleep, he gradually got more and more Startled and confused by the unsettling nature of his current location, not sure if his drowsy mind was playing tricks on him or if he had simply just forgotten to open his heavy eyelids. He pondered on his most recent memories, hoping those would enlighten him about his current predicament.

The emerging thoughts made him cringe however; he remembered being forcibly thrown off a cliff edging the emerald forest, screaming for his life as he flung across the sky with the grace of a catapulted boulder, and ultimately kissing the ground at lethal speed, breaking his neck upon impact and dying instantly.

Realizing that he had met his end in such a pitiful way, unable to even survive a single week upon finally putting his two feet on the ground of his dream academy, he fell into despair.

However, before he could further loathe himself for how utterly pathetic and useless he grew up to be, or ponder on whether or not he would appear in the history books for being the first trainee to die on initiation day, an unexpected neon blue screen suddenly popped out of nowhere in front of his agonizing face, prompting the troubled young man to pay the mysterious apparition some of his attention.

 **You died**

 _ **-retry**_

 _ **-change difficulty**_

 _ **-quit**_

Jaune arc, after inspecting what he deduced to be one of these stereotypical dialog screen from the numerous RPG game he had been wasting his time on instead of actually 'training' to become a hero, Couldn't help but wonder if the ironical entity known as 'karma' had decided to mock him for neglecting his priorities.

That thought however didn't last long for a better explanation to this bizarre situation suddenly came to him.

He was dreaming.

This had to be it. I mean, now that he took the time to reflect more about the recent event which had seemed to flash through his eyes like a sprinting Athlete, he now realized the fact that he got accepted at BEACON, the most prestigious school for Huntsmen/and and huntresses, led by none-other than OZPIN, one of the greatest huntsman on remnant who was not only known for his many fighting prowess But also for his uncanny WITS, with some second rate FORGED transcript he had bought off from a back-alley shady con-artist (who had probably ripped-him off big time ) was pretty far-fetched even by his over optimistic standards.

Plus, getting thrown off a lethally high cliff and be expected to land on his two feet like some kind of super-powered cat . . . what kind of crazy Spartan-like initiation was that ?

Well . . . . . he knew that this school was supposed to train people whose strengths kind of bordered the realm of comic- super-heroes, but come on! Did they expect trainees to have some kind of protective force field around them or something?!

Yea right, like this could be true.

So the only sane conclusion left was that of an haywire dream, probably caused by playing too much of his favorite videogames overnight, coupled with his anxiety at the prospect of running away from his family, stealing one his dad s most prized weapon, and illegally attempting to enroll into beacon academy.

He was most likely still under his parent s roof, snoring loudly with his scroll laying on his face, the devise probably showing him the death dialog-message from him leaving his Knight character motionless around enraged hordes of monster npcs.

Yea, this had to be it. That neon blue screen was probably his scroll interacting with his subconscious mind.

Now more composed thanks to his on-the-spot assumptions, he decided to play along with it.

He examined the different options displayed: try again, change difficulty, quit.

He was familiar with first and the last one. The second one though left him puzzled; if this windows was indeed from the game he had been playing upon falling asleep, then there should be no "change difficulty" option: after all in that rpg, there was no difficulty settings. . . . .

Well, he didn't speculate further; this was a dream, and no matter how lucid it may have appeared to be, dream were not known for their liability at making sense.

Deciding to see for himself what this out of place setting had to offer, he slowly lifted his left arm to the floating blue screen and intuitively pressed his index finger on the glowing character.

Another screen popped up.

 **Change difficulty**

 _ **-impossible**_

 _ **-extreme (selected)**_

 _ **-hard**_

 _ **-normal**_

 _ **-easy**_

 _ **-very easy**_

 _ **-trifling**_

Jaune saw more or less what he had expected to see. A list of selectable difficulties ordered by magnitude of intensity. This list in particular offered more choices than what the usual game would, but he was still pretty familiar with this sort of basic layout.

What made him cringe (again) was the difficulty which he had been assigned to: the difficulty which had the perilous title of "extreme".

Jaune first didn't know what to think about that. After playing so many games, he himself enjoyed cranking up the difficulty to avoid his multiples playthrough getting bland and boring, especially for titles he had completed more than once or twice.

But then he connected the dots, or more precisely the hypothetical relationship between his hypothetical gruesome demise and the hypothetical impact this "extreme" difficulty had had upon his not so hypothetical dreadful experience of falling to death; and whether it be a dream or not, Jaune arc definitely DID NOT enjoy the experience of breaking his neck on the ground.

So Jaune became pretty pissed off, resentful at no one in particular but perhaps whatever higher entity had thought it would be a fun idea to give him this nightmare, and then, by showing him the iconic "retry upon death" dialog window, give him the sadistic implication that his dread and sorrow were nothing but part of some run-of-the-mill rpg video-game that for some reason had its default difficulty set on "extreme".

Enraged not only by the traumatic experience, but also frustrated by being shown his blatant helplessness upon being tested at Beacon, Jaune decided to get an irrational revenge against an even more irrational entity by selecting, shamelessly, the easiest difficulty on the list :

 **Change difficulty**

 _ **-impossible**_

 _ **-extreme**_

 _ **-hard**_

 _ **-normal**_

 _ **-easy**_

 _ **-very easy**_

 _ **-trifling (selected)**_

. . . . .

Jaune sighed . . . . "how immature of me" he thought, realizing that he was getting so worked up against what was nothing more than a stupid dream. He had had enough of all this nonsense. Growing tired of this whole ordeal, he now wished nothing more but to get a good night of sleep so he had the energy tomorrow to worry about the many life-problems he would have to deal with.

So without a second thought, he pressed to the "quit" button and hopefully be done with all of this

 **Warning:**

 _ **If you quit, you will be erased from existence. Proceed?**_

Jaune, upon reading the unexpected message and grasping its sinister implication, couldn't help but feel a freezing chill running through his spine.

"Erased from existence? What the hell?"

The young man was convinced that he was in fact dreaming. After all, there was no freaking way that this silly dialog screen could have any influence over his more than real existence whatsoever, other than perhaps give a slight trauma to his mental psyche. . . . .

. . . . . So why did he have the very unsettling feeling that pressing this button would be the worst decision he ever took? Did he actually start to believe that this silly dream was more than just an episodic lucid experience resulting from his whimsical mind?

He didn't want to admit it, but even if the odds that this message holding any actual truth was reassuringly closer to zero than the possibility of Grimms suddenly barging in his room and giving him back massage, as long as there was this ridiculously miniscule chance that this message ever told the truth, he wouldn't risk it.

"Ha ha ha . . . . I am really going crazy ain't I ? . . . "

That is why against his rational judgment, he discarded the dreadful option for its more reassuring counterpart: "continue".

As soon as he touched the phantasmal screen, an bright light engulfed him . . . . .

 **Well that's about it for the prologue.**

 **If for some reasons you didn't get the cues that Jaune is going to be pretty op, well let me make it clear: yes, he will be, to a very ridiculous level in fact.**

 **Btw, I am not sure how to proceed from this point, though i am leaning toward one of these 2 scenarios: Should Jaune just wake up in the emerald forest, wondering what the hell had just happened, or should he wake up in his younger years (possibly at birth) being even more confused at what is going on ?**

 **I will select one of these 2 scenarios depending on the comments . . . . Well if anyone bother to leave some feedback in the first place.**


End file.
